(570) Black Orchid - Part 1

Black Orchid is an interesting story because it’s the 120^th Doctor Who story and also it’s the first two part story since season 12’s ‘The Sontaran Experiment’ and by my reckoning, its only the 4^th two parter story in Doctor Who so far. This is the 37^th episode for Matthew Waterhouse and this means he overtakes Anneke Wills and Michael Craze, its hard to believe he has been in for 37 episodes and sadly he doesn’t do a great deal in this episode because he stands and watches the Doctor play cricket (more of that later), then he tries to dance and then he starts eating. This story was written by Terence Dudley who wrote the less than stellar ‘Four to Doomsday’. There was no way that Dudley could write a worse story in two episodes that his debut story.

The big selling point in this story is that Sarah Sutton plays two characters in this story. Not only is she playing Nyssa as usual but she plays Ann Talbot, she looks and sounds exactly like Nyssa and its great to see the effects that are used to have two Sarah Sutton’s on the screen. I think back to the bit in ‘Enemy of the World’ where the Doctor and Salamander appear on screen and that was 1968 so its interesting to see how well things have progressed in 14 years.

The episode starts off with the Doctor and company at a train station and the Doctor gets taken to be another Doctor and within minutes he is playing cricket which is in keeping with his outfit. The Doctor as it turns out is quite good at Cricket and there is good couple of minutes which is given over to this but its quite entertaining but this would never have happened during the Tom Baker era.

The story is moving towards a ball which is taking place at Cranleigh house and this means that we get to see Tegan dancing which is quite good and its good enough I think to get Janet Fielding on Strictly Come Dancing. Tegan doesn’t do a great deal but then again there isn’t a great deal to do. As an aussie, she appreciates some good cricket and then becoming friends with Sir Robert Muir (Moray Watson). I thought that Watson is very good as Muir because he seems like he’s just come out of Downton Abbey but is better. Lady Cranleigh is another good piece of casting because Barbara Murray also seems to have come out of Downton Abbey. Her disbelief that Nyssa isn’t a Worcestershire Talbot is amusing. Michael Cochrane is great as Lord Cranliegh, I could watch Cochrane is pretty much anything and here he is just fantastic. The Doctor spends the latter part of the episode in a dressing gown (which is an odd thing to see) and goes looking for something after someone pinches his fancy dress costume. After doing such a great job in playing cricket that he deserves the chance to take it easy.

It’s a much better episode for Terence Dudley than ‘Four to Doomsday’ and Ron Jones has done a great job in keeping the story going and its easy to see why the story is a two parter because I don’t think that there is anything that would sustain four episodes. The cliffhanger is rather good because the masked figure (who pinch the Doctor’s costume) has strangled a servant and is about to strangle Ann so the end to the episode is perhaps the most exciting part of the episode but that’s not a critiscm as the whole thing works very well.